USA TODAY International Edition
HIGHLIGHT: OREGON
ALABAMA Montgomery: Educators say they’re concerned about a new reading test they worry could result in thousands of third graders in the state being held back.
ALASKA Anchorage: A federal agency has rejected an iconic Alaska tree for listing as a threatened species due to climate warming. The U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Friday that yellow cedars do not warrant additional protections because trees affected by warming grow in areas representing less than 6% of the overall area where they can be found.
ARIZONA Phoenix: The city celebrated the grand reopening of the Piestewa Peak trailhead’s upgraded amenities Friday morning. The event featured a tribal blessing from the Gila River Indian Community, along with remarks from Phoenix officials and members of the Hopi Tribe.
ARKANSAS Little Rock: The state Department of Human Services has temporarily taken over three more nursing homes after complaints were made about how they were being run.
CALIFORNIA Los Angeles: A bronze sculpture that mysteriously disappeared from the Los Angeles Central Library 50 years ago has returned to its original home. One of three panels of the Well of Scribes was unveiled at the downtown library Friday, the Los Angeles Times reports.
COLORADO Denver: Real estate experts say a state agency has left an office building unoccupied for about a decade, representing millions in lost potential revenue. The Denver Post reports the five- floor Capitol Hill building is one of three owned by the state Public Employee Retirement Association.
CONNECTICUT Hartford: The educational group that owns the B- 17 bomber that crashed at an airport, killing seven people, says it is suspending flights and its Wings of Freedom Tour for the remainder of the year. The Collings Foundation said Friday that the decision comes in the wake of Wednesday’s tragic crash.
DELAWARE Wilmington: The City Council president is pressing criminal charges against a man who regularly criticizes her and other officials at public meetings. Dion Wilson was arrested at his home Wednesday on misdemeanor charges of harassment and disorderly conduct. Court documents show City Council President Hanifa Shabazz told police she feared for her safety.
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA Washing
ton: A public psychiatric hospital has been without drinking water for over a week. News outlets report bacteria that can cause Legionnaires’ disease were found in the water system of St. Elizabeths Hospital last month.
FLORIDA Big Cypress National Pre
serve: Officials say trappers have captured a record- setting 18- foot, 4- inch python as part of a growing effort that encourages hunters to remove the invasive snakes from the Everglades.
GEORGIA Atlanta: Tyler Perry officially christened his massive new film studio Saturday. Tyler Perry Studios, a 330- acre studio that once served as a Confederate army base, has 12 soundstages, each named after seminal black actors and actresses.
HAWAII Nahiku: Scientists have used helicopters to launch an aerial attack against an invasive fire ant species on east Maui.
IDAHO Winchester: A public health advisory is in place for Winchester Lake after testing indicated elevated levels of toxins produced by bluegreen algae.
ILLINOIS Springfield: Gov. J. B. Pritzker is spending $ 850,000 of his own money to continue renovations to the historic Illinois Governor’s Mansion. The estate built in 1855 will be closed for tours until Nov. 23.
INDIANA Indianapolis: The state Bureau of Motor Vehicles is putting on hold a policy allowing nonbinary gender designations on driver’s licenses while officials develop new formal regulations for gender changes on state- issued IDs.
IOWA Des Moines: The chief justice of the state Supreme Court has apologized to a legislative committee investigating the break- ins at courthouses and the court system’s own state- owned building as part of a cybersecurity vulnerability test.
KANSAS Topeka: Gov. Laura Kelly has joined a legal battle to save a federal program that shields young immigrants from deportation. Kelly’s move Friday puts the Democratic governor and Republican Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt on opposite sides of a case before the U. S. Supreme Court.
KENTUCKY Louisville: U. S. Sen. Mitch McConnell says he’s working to secure sufficient funding for the state’s military posts, including a new middle school at Fort Campbell.
LOUISIANA Baton Rouge: Nicholls State University has released its first branded beer. The southeastern Louisiana school launched Colonels Retreat, a lager brewed by Bayou Tech Brewery, at Saturday’s football game against Central Arkansas.
MAINE Augusta: The state’s Supreme Court says Goose Rocks Beach belongs to the town of Kennebunkport and not the beachfront landowners who spent years fighting to keep the public off the beach.
MARYLAND Baltimore: The city’s top prosecutor has begun asking judges to throw out 790 convictions she says were tainted by officers linked to a corruption scandal.
MASSACHUSETTS Concord: The U. S. Army Corps of Engineers has recommended replacing the two narrow and often backed- up bridges that carry vehicular traffic across the Cape Cod Canal.
MICHIGAN Detroit: The city is receiving $ 9.7 million from the federal government to remove lead from homes, the largest single amount awarded to a local government.
MINNESOTA Minneapolis: The mother of a girl whose videotaped arrest sparked an angry backlash on social media says her 13- year- old daughter has a mental illness, and officers were overly aggressive in handling her. Davida Conover says her daughter was “basically treated like an animal.”
MISSISSIPPI Gulfport: The state’s blue guitar license plates are disappearing, and any vehicle that still wears one come January will be an easy target for a traffic ticket. But many people in the state aren’t crazy about the “dirty” brown color and design of the new plate. Sales of specialty plates are up 10% from January through August compared to last year, an official says.
MISSOURI Jefferson City: A federal judge has declined to block a state law that bans the labeling of plantbased meat substitutes as meat. U. S. District Judge Fernando Gaitan Jr. said he wouldn’t issue a preliminary injunction to stop agriculture officials from enforcing the law, which says a product can’t be marketed as meat unless it comes from an animal with two or four feet, The St. Louis Post- Dispatch reports.
MONTANA Billings: U. S. forest officials have announced details of a proposed land exchange that would increase public access. The Billings Gazette reports the Custer Gallatin National Forest proposed trading portions of forest lands to the Crazy Mountain Ranch, Rock Creek Ranch and Wild Eagle Mountain Ranch.
NEBRASKA Omaha: Proposed social studies standards would encourage the state’s schoolchildren to look at history from multiple perspectives. The Omaha World- Herald reports the draft proposal, written by local educators, suggests what students should know about and be able to do in history, government, civics, geography and economics.
NEVADA Las Vegas: A proposed amendment to a county ordinance has renewed a debate about the rights of sex workers. The Las Vegas Sun reports the Nye County ordinance would restrict when legal prostitutes are permitted to leave licensed brothels, prohibiting them from leaving for more than six hours within a 10- day period. NEW HAMPSHIRE Manchester: Scholars and die- hard fans of the Grateful Dead will soon gather in the state for a weeklong conference that looks at the cultural impact of the band. Saint Anselm College in Manchester will host “A Long Strange Trip: The Culture of the Grateful Dead” on Oct. 22- 25.
NEW JERSEY Atlantic City: Marty Small intends on bringing big changes to this city, where yet another corruption scandal has propelled him to the office he sought for so long. Small, the City Council president, became acting mayor Friday, a day after Frank Gilliam Jr., a fellow Democrat, admitted stealing $ 87,000 from a youth basketball club he founded, and resigned.
NEW MEXICO Taos: A tree to be displayed outside the U. S. Capitol over the holidays is supposed to come from a forest in the state – if the U. S. Forest Service can get an exception from a tree- cutting ban across all New Mexico national forests. The agency says it’s trying. The ban came in a 2013 lawsuit that accused the Forest Service and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service of failing to track the threatened Mexican spotted owl for more than 20 years.
NEW YORK Albany: The state is taking most 17- year- olds with offenses out of the adult criminal justice system. The change is effective this month under the second part of 2017 legislation that raised New York’s age of criminal responsibility to 18.
NORTH CAROLINA Raleigh: Republican lawmakers are defending how they redrew state House districts at the direction of state judges who found lines drawn two years ago were tainted by extreme partisan bias favoring the GOP. The legislators’ attorneys filed a brief Friday urging the three- judge panel that ordered the remap to leave recent changes intact.
NORTH DAKOTA Cannon Ball: A 16- year- old climate activist who garnered international attention when she scolded world leaders at the United Nations is visiting American Indian reservations in the Dakotas to talk about oil pipelines. Greta Thunberg appeared at panel discussions on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota on Sunday evening and is scheduled to do the same on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota on Tuesday.
OHIO Columbus: A bill that would require public middle and high school students to take an annual class in suicide and violence prevention training is headed to the state Senate. The bill passed last week by the Ohio House also would require every public school to have a student- led antiviolence club and a threat assessment team composed of school staff.
OKLAHOMA Enid: A woman was shot in the thigh when a dog inside the vehicle with her jumped onto a backseat console, causing a gun under the console to fire.
PENNSYLVANIA Harrisburg: A state law is ending a requirement that telephone customers who want to remain on the state’s do- not- call registry have to renew their listing every five years. Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf on Friday signed changes to the Telemarketer Registration Act. RHODE ISLAND South Kingstown: The University of Rhode Island is celebrating the opening of a $ 150 million engineering complex. Democratic Gov. Gina Raimondo, members of the state’s congressional delegation and URI officials plan to attend the ceremony Monday morning.
SOUTH CAROLINA Greenville: An investigation into law enforcement shooting records found that Greenville County deputies have pulled the trigger more than any other agency in the state. The probe found 1 in 8 fatal shootings by law enforcement officers in the state involves a Greenville County deputy.
SOUTH DAKOTA Wind Cave Nation
al Park: The National Park Service says 29 black- footed ferrets were released into their new home at the park Thursday. The ferrets are considered among the rarest animals in North America.
TENNESSEE Gatlinburg: Two bear cubs were rescued after they locked themselves in a security technician’s van and honked the horn for help.
TEXAS Corpus Christi: An annual celebration honoring the life of slain Tejano music queen Selena will no longer be held in her South Texas hometown. Officials in Corpus Christi were caught by surprise after learning their city would be losing the Fiesta de la Flor event. UTAH Antelope Island State Park: The state has announced plans to restore the bighorn sheep population a year after a respiratory illness outbreak killed more than 100 sheep.
VERMONT Burlington: A new historic site marker on the Lake Champlain waterfront commemorates the first documented international hockey game. The marker in Burlington’s waterfront park was dedicated Saturday morning.
VIRGINIA Buchanan: Agricultural producers in the state’s southwest are feeling the pain of drought conditions. The Roanoke Times reports most of the Roanoke and New River valleys are experiencing moderate drought, with some parts reaching severe levels.
WASHINGTON Mount Vernon: Orange, yellow, white and purple carrots of all shapes and sizes were harvested last week as part of a research trial to test carrots’ genetic resistance to disease. The Skagit Valley Herald reports plant pathologist Lindsey du Toit said 220 breeding lines of carrots were planted this summer at the Washington State University Mount Vernon Research Center.
WEST VIRGINIA Morgantown: A project to digitize historical newspaper archives has landed another grant. The West Virginia University Libraries’ West Virginia & Regional History Center received a nearly $ 202,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to keep digitizing newspapers published in the state from 1790 to 1923.
WISCONSIN Madison: Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will issue the state’s first pardons in nine years, invoking his constitutional power to grant clemency to four people. Evers plans to issue the pardons Monday.
WYOMING Cheyenne: The governor’s office has introduced a hunger initiative aimed at creating a united effort against food insecurity across the state. The Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports Gov. Mark Gordon’s wife, Jennie, announced the Wyoming Hunger Initiative’s launch Friday.